


Knocking at Night

by WinterDreams



Category: Servamp (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Ambiguous Relationships, Angst and Feels, Canon Compliant, Canon Disabled Character, Canon Universe, Cat Cuddles, Domestic Fluff, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Everyone Needs A Hug, Fluff and Angst, Found Family, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Late Night Conversations, M/M, Missing Scenes, Nightmares, Past Violence, Sleepy Cuddles, but especially Mahiru, c3 arc, everyone also needs to talk to each other, it's there if you want it to be, past trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-06
Updated: 2019-03-06
Packaged: 2019-11-07 07:36:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,705
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17956322
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WinterDreams/pseuds/WinterDreams
Summary: These are the conversations and gestures of comfort that ensue when a child of sunshine befriends creatures of night.OR: I just wanted to write about Mahiru getting a hug after all the trauma he went through during the C3 arc and now it's an entire fic about how they are all insomniacs in need of comfort





	Knocking at Night

**Author's Note:**

> Minor violence/gore concerning Ray's part and the battles he witnessed as a human before death.

“So vampires really are nocturnal?”

It’s the fourth night since Mahiru found Kuro, third night since they were attacked by Belkia, and Mahiru almost drops his glass when he enters the kitchen at three in the morning for water and turns away from the sink to spot the tiny blue glow coming from the couch.

He keeps his grip on his glass long enough to remember his new house guest and stop himself from grabbing the nearest household cleaning product as a weapon again. Faint sound effects filter through the air, but Kuro doesn’t say anything and Mahiru closes his eyes.

He takes a few deep breaths to calm his now frantically beating heart before he opens his eyes and heads back toward his bedroom.

On the way he pauses for a second to hover at the arm rest of the couch where Kuro props his head. His eyes are glued to the screen despite the shadows under them and the yawn that cracks open his jaw. There’s a bag of chips resting against Kuro’s thigh, seconds away from toppling over despite Mahiru’s earlier lecture about making a mess.

Mahiru voices his question then, voice almost as scratchy as Kuro’s thanks to the interruption of his sleep. The vampire doesn’t immediately answer, and Mahiru rubs his eyes as he wonders if the vampire turning into his animal form in sunlight was supposed to be evidence of that part of the legend being true.

“You humans have to get some things right,” Kuro says just as Mahiru turns to leave.   

Which should be a confirmation and Mahiru’s tired brain categorizes it as such. He nods even though Kuro can’t see it and shuffles back to his warm bed as the glow of the screen casts flickering shapes along the walls.

Only once a few more days pass, and Mahiru notices both Kuro’s reticence on vampire facts and his habit of napping on Mahiru’s bed in cat form regardless of the time of day, will Mahiru question whether nocturnality was what Kuro referred to.  

 

***

 

A tickle to Mahiru’s cheek wakes him to a dark room.

“Kuro?” he calls, voice a sleepy whisper. He has slept at so many different homes in the past week that he struggles to remember which bed he lies in now, but the one constant has been Kuro sleeping near him.

“The cushion is too hard,” Kuro responds after a pause, right by Mahiru’s shoulder. “I can’t sleep.”

Mahiru has never heard a cat cry before, even when he first found Kuro in that alleyway. But the small mewling noises that punctuate the pause between each of Kuro’s words can be nothing else.

Mahiru reaches out in the dark and finds Kuro’s body shaking beneath his soft fur.

Without a word, Mahiru scoops Kuro onto his chest as his heart begins pounding. A day has now passed, but Mahiru can still see Kuro lying on the cold floor outside their bedroom at Tetsu’s inn, can still hear the ringing of the phone that Mahiru used to turn away from Kuro and all the difficult questions he needed to ask.

The night swells now with the echoes of the answers Mahiru found, and he suddenly needs to be as close to Kuro as Kuro needs to be to him.

Kuro butts his head against Mahiru’s palm and curls into as small a ball as he can. Mahiru tugs the blanket over them both before cradling the ball of fur. The small snuffling sounds slowly die down as Mahiru pets Kuro like he would any other cat, but Mahiru can’t close his eyes.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Mahiru asks.

There was no time for that immediately following Mahiru’s foray into Kuro’s memories and breaking Kuro out of the black ball. When they landed in the doctor’s office, Mahiru told Kuro they could talk more about it anytime Kuro wanted, but at that moment they needed to rush to the others’ aid.

Then Hyde had been broken, C3 needed to be reasoned with, Hyde, Lily, and Hugh all needed to be checked into the hospital, their Eves needed to be comforted, and by the time the Sloth pair could return to their apartment it was nearing midnight. Mahiru just wanted a shower, Kuro wanted to slurp cup ramen in the living room, and they eventually sat shoulder to shoulder on the couch, but only to watch half a movie before Mahiru headed to bed.

“Not really,” Kuro sniffs, slightly muffled as he presses his face against Mahiru’s shirt.

“That’s okay.”

A second passes.

“I tried not to hurt anyone this time,” Kuro says, and his tail lashes once beneath the blanket. “I tried to keep them all safe.”

“I know,” Mahiru says, because he saw Kuro knock the C3 weapons away from Tsubaki even after Tsubaki broke yet another sibling. “Everyone knows that.”

He opens his mouth to continue, but falters as his eyes adapt to the darkness around him. He still struggles to fully comprehend the things he saw in Kuro’s past; it feels like trying to correctly guess the size of a mountain when the peak looms somewhere above the clouds and the base stretches further along the horizon than Mahiru can see. Other parts of the mountain are missing too, not just the end points, for rotting trees and gnarled vines cover the slopes while years of gloomy gales and periodic rain have torn away huge chunks of rock.

There are still countless places where Mahiru can fall, slipping from an edge here, twisting his ankle on a root there. The sands he crossed and the water he swam through before he stalked Kuro through the dirt paths of his past do not guarantee he now knows how to perfectly traipse through the wilderness everyone holds in their hearts.

But the lion that burst forth in response to Mahiru’s efforts and the cat nuzzling his chest prove that times he is uncertain are the times he needs to reach out his hand the most.

“You tried and because of that, everyone is still alive,” Mahiru says. “And because everyone is still alive, we can still fix things.”

“None of us know how to fix a broken vampire,” Kuro points out, but all sounds of crying have faded.

“That doctor who helped you might. Or C3.” He gently tweaks one of Kuro’s ears. “You agreed we should have C3 help us.”

“Doesn’t mean I’m happy about it,” Kuro says, finally sounding like his old self.

“I know. But we’ll be careful.”

“When are you ever careful?” Kuro snorts, and Mahiru tweaks his ear again. “I give it a day before you’ve made at least three friends at C3. _Excluding_ that coffee-glasses guy.”

“Shuuhei-senpai?”

“Sure, if he’s coffee-glasses guy. He doesn’t count.”

“I don’t think he actually likes me much.”

“But you’ve already met him, which means he _will_. We can’t count anyone with a head-start.”

“Who exactly is the ‘we’?” Mahiru teases, and Kuro uncurls so he can drag himself further up Mahiru’s chest. “I don’t think the people being bet on can participate in them.”

“All of my siblings,” Kuro says, and Mahiru doesn’t miss that word, but he keeps his hands still against Kuro’s fur, “all of their Eves, all of the subclasses, all of your classmates. I bet even Tsubaki’s subclasses would participate.”

“Who’d bet against you?”

“No one would bet against me, they’d just bet a different number of friends they think you’d make.” Kuro yawns and Mahiru stifles his responding one. “Onsen Man probably believes you’ll be best friends with the whole department. Voted Most Likable Employee in a month.”

“Now you’re just being ridiculous.”

“I’m being realistic.” He yawns again but continues. “Just don’t forget about your adorable NEET vampire when you’re rich and famous, Mahiru.”

“How can I forget him when he’ll still be whining at me to buy conbini ramen instead of spending money on nice food?” Mahiru shoots back but starts petting Kuro again in case a real fear lurks underneath Kuro’s joke.

“If you’re super rich, you should be less worried about buying cheap food.”  

“It’s not about the money, it’s about your health,” Mahiru replies, and pokes Kuro’s stomach. The vampire opens a single glowing eye to glare at him but doesn’t move.

“I am a paragon of immortal health,” Kuro says, and Mahiru rolls his eyes.

He doesn’t reply and Kuro falls quiet, though he does shift again so he rests right under Mahiru’s chin. Even once Mahiru’s hands grow tired of moving, he keeps one splayed across the little ball of warmth as Kuro’s breathing evens out.

Mahiru would have slept through the night either way, but this way he wakes slowly and cozily the next morning despite the snow falling outside.  

 

***

 

Mahiru starts to stand and Kuro drops a bowl of chips in Mahiru’s lap.

“I’m not your table,” Mahiru says as he stares down at the metal bowl as large as his head. He glares up at Kuro, but his Servamp just shrugs.

“You were going to leave.”

“It’s past midnight,” Mahiru points out from his spot on the blue couch of his living room.

“But we’ve only watched the first _Ice Age_ ,” Licht says, and looks up from his cushion on the rug at the foot of the couch. He and Hyde were sitting on the second blue couch before Licht kicked Hyde off one too many times and Mahiru yelled at them about all the thumping bothering his downstairs neighbours.

Rather than stop their arguing and kicking, they decided the solution was to sit on the floor with the glass coffee table so when Hyde got knocked over, he wouldn’t make as much noise.

“You have to at least watch the sequel,” Hyde agrees from where he sprawls half underneath the coffee table after Licht’s latest kick. Instead of getting up, he’s dragged his can of coffee down with him and props his head up against the wooden leg of the table. “Usually those are still passable, and they don’t get really bad until the third one.”

“It’s not the quality of the movies,” Mahiru tells them, tempted to whip out the email Krantz sent him claiming Licht should be kept to a consistent sleeping schedule, “It’s the fact that I want to sleep.”

“You weren’t going to sleep,” Kuro replies, “You were going to go worry unnecessarily.”

“I was _not_ ,” Mahiru says, even though he had been thinking of doing a mental inventory of the food they have in the house now that there are two unexpected guests living with them for the unforeseeable future. “I was going to worry the appropriate amount.”

Instead of plopping back down beside Mahiru and transforming into a cat to try his usual _just look at my cuteness_ strategy, Kuro stands staring at Mahiru until new words slowly blossom on his tongue. Though Kuro was never mute around Mahiru before, he’s been trying to use his words for more than just complaining in the past week.

The new tactic lights a spark Mahiru never realized their partnership was missing before, like when Mahiru finally comes up for air after a long study session and realizes he hasn’t eaten in hours. He is technically functioning the whole time, technically achieving something, and so he never notices something is missing in the moment.

Mahiru thought he and Kuro were functioning in the moment because Kuro wouldn’t hesitate to jump in front of danger for Mahiru, Mahiru would defend Kuro against those who called him a tool, and in between all of that, they ate meals together and carved out domestic routines.

All of that is more than Mahiru has in any other relationship, and so he didn’t know that actions would not always explain themselves, that familiarity did not equal vulnerability, and that not everyone could confidently express themselves even with the people they were closest to.

He didn’t consider the fact that sometimes people agreed with others even if it meant stripping away bits and pieces of themselves where no one else could see. He didn’t know that agreement to ascribed roles within relationships did not mean those roles were healthy, and that even relationships that were working needed to be consciously assessed from time to time.

So Mahiru always pushed Kuro until Kuro agreed because Kuro is lazy.

Mahiru always charged forward first because Kuro is lazy.

Mahiru always reached out his hand to new people first because Kuro is lazy.

Kuro is lazy because C3 pushed him until he broke, and Kuro is lazy because his immortal family didn’t have time to learn to communicate with each other before their bonds were tested.

“Think of this as practice,” Kuro says, and takes a chip from the bowl Mahiru still holds, “For when you go to university and you’re living in dorms and your roommates want to stay up like this.”

“You don’t need to practice being lazy.”

“I don’t but you certainly do.”

“This isn’t being lazy,” Hyde argues, “This is having fun.”

“Mahiru needs practice for that too.”

Mahiru tosses a chip at Kuro for that, and the vampire catches it in his mouth with the slightest shadows of a smirk.

“All of you shut up and start the second movie,” Licht demands, one knee now drawn up to his chest. “You need to appreciate these wonderful animals if you want any chance of becoming an angel like me.”

“You do realize these animals are animated, right, darling angel?”

Licht aims another kick, but Hyde twists away and cackles as Licht’s foot strikes the coffee table instead. Kuro collapses beside Mahiru as he shouts at the Greed pair to be careful.

“See?” Kuro says, and takes another chip as he leans against Mahiru’s shoulder. “You also need to be here to keep them in line.”

“You could do that.”

“Me? Deal with that violent duo? I’d rather just watch the movie.”

Mahiru sighs, but trapped by a bowl of chips and now Kuro’s body heat as he maintains close contact for chip access, Mahiru doesn’t immediately attempt to move again. He watches Licht scoot forward so he can shove at Hyde with his foot until the vampire gets up to press play for the second movie.

He is curious about these American movies that no one in the group but Licht has heard of. The only reason he planned to get up in the first place was because his eyes were starting to ache for closure.

“Where did you get these chips, anyways?” Mahiru asks Kuro, because the weird rat thing is on screen again and Mahiru doesn’t care about it. Hyde always laughs at it before Licht insults him by comparing the two, but the animal doesn’t talk so no one shushes Mahiru.

“Talked to a C3 guy,” Kuro says, and Mahiru stares at him.

“How did you convince him to buy you chips?”

“Our angel and my brother are a terrifying pair,” Hyde answers for Kuro without looking away from the movie. “I’m starting to regret ever letting them near each other.”

“Mr. Cat wanted snacks,” Licht explains, “And vegetables.”  

“Vegetables, too?” Mahiru says and raises an eyebrow at Kuro who chooses that moment to stuff an entire handful of chips in his mouth.

Kuro can only shrug with his eyes fixed on the TV screen and Mahiru simply smiles to himself when Kuro continues to avoid meeting Mahiru’s gaze.

Kuro looks over when Mahiru places the bowl in Kuro’s lap, but Mahiru stays where he is until he falls asleep on Kuro’s shoulder.

 

***

 

Tsurugi has lived most of his life in the dark, even after he graduated from the windowless room he shared with Touma. He wakes in the dark, dresses in the dark, sometimes showers in the dark, and returns home to the dark. Kuni-chan was always asleep by the time Tsurugi returned and Jeje didn’t bother with lights unless another human turned them on.

So when Tsurugi returns to his room after a late-night training and impromptu mission to find the kitchen lights on, he stumbles to a halt in the doorway.

He cranes his head back to check the number of the room as if his muscle memory has failed him after more than five years of perfect use.

The number is correct and a sudden but faint sound of raucous cheering drifts from the living room portion of the common room.

The Sloth duo, his tired brain finally reminds him, and Tsurugi drags a trembling hand across his cold face. Details and memories continue to be slippery things since the incident with the alarm, but he’s been holding it together well enough that Yumi and Jun only watch him for half the time they’re together.

The Eve of Sloth, however, has stared without reserve since Tsurugi took out those subclasses while the human was stuck in the car.

 _Scared,_ Tsurugi said.

 _Curious,_ Jun would later tell Tsurugi, _In his words._

 _Desperate,_ Tsurugi thinks now, the boy looking like he’s three seconds away from attempting a counseling session with all of them even while keeping a careful distance between them.

Tsurugi would rather the fear when a single solid prod could knock over the swaying supports of his sanity he hastily put together with clothing and bedsheets.

He takes a careful step into the room with those supports ruffling, but a furtive glance around the room finds Mahiru absent. The door to his and Kuro’s bedroom is firmly closed with no light slicing through the crack at the bottom.

Tsurugi’s footsteps lack sound as he moves into the room until he can see over the backrest of the couch.

Kuro sprawls across the battered cushions in a perfect display of his sin name.  Messy hair spread across pillows, video game inches from his face, shirt rucked up, food stained plate on the floor, glass of pop on the table, foot idly scratching his bare ankle, and only his thumbs moving. The only other addition Tsurugi can think of is sweatpants, but Kuro’s white jeans look stretchy and comfortable enough.

 _Never underestimate a vampire_ is a constant refrain at C3 and Servamps are the deadliest of them all.

Despite that, and despite Tsurugi having witnessed the bloodiest scenes of all his coworkers, he draws close enough to Kuro that he can watch the cartoon creatures jump across his video game screen.

The vampire doesn’t twitch, and Tsurugi doesn’t know if it’s arrogance or a strange trust that only his Eve seems capable of, but the stillness makes Tsurugi’s lips twitch up.

Maybe it’s exactly because Tsurugi has seen the worst that vampires can do that he is always drawn to these moments of domesticity that defy every violent impulse that’s been aimed at him.

Maybe his shoulders stay relaxed because he has grown up with people who claimed they would take care of him but didn’t hesitate to send him into battles even as he was already breaking.

Maybe neither human nor vampire flinch at each other in this unexpected patch of artificial light because restraints are tucked away for now and they are both too tired to fight without someone else ordering them to.

Tsurugi doesn’t particularly care about the reason as he leans over the back the couch and, despite not even knowing what the console is supposed to be, says,

“I’ll tell you how to beat the secret level for five thousand yen.”

“You’ve never played this game,” Kuro replies without moving, and Tsurugi leans a little more on the couch.

“I’ll have you know I spent a lot of my childhood indoors. What else would I do if not play games?”

“This game just came out this week.”

“Are you saying _I’m_ too old for games, but an immortal vampire isn’t?”

That finally earns Tsurugi a single flicker of the vampire’s gaze before Kuro looks back to his game screen.

“No, but you spend most of your time with those other two and they don’t seem the type.”

Kuro finally moves, squeezing his shoulders back and rolling his neck until they both hear a crack. “Now that’s something I would pay to see.”

“How much?” Tsurugi asks, smiling a little because he can already hear Yumi’s screeching. The mental image is enough to make the question half-serious, enough that Kuro rolls a little onto his back to glance up at Tsurugi.

“You’d have to ask Mahiru,” Kuro says after a beat. “He’s the wallet.”

“Is that how you got that game?” Tsurugi asks, dropping his head to rest his chin on his folded arms. “Sneak money off your Eve? I can’t imagine the Servamp of Sloth working a part time job.”

His feet ache from the long day, but he simply shifts from foot to foot. He remembers from when Kuni-chan and Jeje were at C3 how rare it is for a bonded Servamp to be without their Eve during the day. And lazing on the couch with a game blasting cheerful but tinny music, the monstrosity of the most powerful Servamp falls away like the blanket pooling on the ground by his feet.

Not that Kuro acts much differently during the day but touching the bruise on Tsurugi’s neck reminds him of those claws cleanly slashing through the noose that bound him.

“I didn’t steal anything,” Kuro says, as close to a snap as Tsurugi has yet heard. “Mahiru bought it for me online those days you told us to stay in his apartment.”

“Tired of interacting with you?” Tsurugi asks, though he keeps his tone light.

Kuro raises one shoulder in a half shrug as if they are both blind to the affection Mahiru has for the Servamp. C3’s entire plan for keeping this particular situation in check relies specifically on Mahiru’s fierce attachment, and while Tsurugi suspects Kuro knows this, neither member of the pair seems to be trying to be subtler about it given Tsurugi has lost count of how many times Kuro used Mahiru as his personal furniture that day.   

But maybe that is part of the Servamp’s strategy, for Tsurugi watched the recording of his previous capture as well. Even through a screen, the tense position Kuro maintained made Tsurugi’s hands twitch for his own weapon as if the vampire could jump through technology and time alike to attack.

There was no room for compromise in his sullen tone and no chance of cooperation lurking in his narrowed eyes for even a single second. It didn’t matter who held Mahiru, it only mattered that such person wasn’t Kuro. Which should have meant easy acquiesce born from fear, but instead meant glares, headaches, and a ridiculous amount of money to fix the structural damage to the building.

 _I think they made their message pretty clear,_ Jun sighed after they watched the recording of the escape, Shuuhei’s pinched mouth only making Tsurugi laugh just like he laughed at Mahiru’s juice comment.

 _Agreed,_ Shuuhei said through gritted out teeth before stomping out of the room.

Kuro will not do anything unless Mahiru stands happily at his side, and every arm casually slung over Mahiru’s head is a glaring reminder of that.

It’s laughable in a sad way, Tsurugi thinks as he stares down at Kuro’s silver hair, that Kuro’s movements can be restricted, Mahiru stuck in this maze of a building, and yet watching them makes Tsurugi feel like he is still the little boy watching all his classmates go home to their families while a windowless room waits for him.

“If you’re just going to keep standing there, you should get me some chips,” Kuro’s voice breaks Tsurugi from his contemplation.

“Pay me and maybe,” Tsurugi sings with a grin.

“Get some chips for yourself too as payment.”

“If I do that you need to pay me double.”

Kuro groans and mutters his typical complaint that makes Tsurugi think he should start a bet with Yumi and Jun about how often the Servamp will utter that single word in a day.

“At least stop hovering,” Kuro complains, “I feel like you’re three seconds away from strangling me.”

“Why would I ever do that to a cute kitty like you?” Tsurugi asks, and Kuro twists just to give Tsurugi a flat look. Yet he turns back to his game in a heart beat, and his limbs stay relaxed except for his curled hands and moving thumbs.  

Tsurugi watches him for another minute, glancing once toward Mahiru’s quiet bedroom. The door stays closed, and Kuro doesn’t repeat his request. Behind them the fridge lets out a little gurgle as if in response to a particularly loud crashing sound that bursts from Kuro’s game.

“Are you gonna show me all the super secret levels?” Tsurugi asks as he comes around the side of the couch and grabs the blanket off the floor.

He shoves Kuro’s legs until he slumps into a sitting position and Tsurugi can perch on the free cushion to watch the game now resting on Kuro’s drawn-up knees.

“You don’t even need to pay me for it.”  

 

***

 

It’s one thirty in the morning by the time Tooru has a chance to stop by Mahiru’s barren hospital room for more than thirty seconds.

Thirty seconds to confirm his nephew’s arm was finally in a cast, an IV was in him, and he was stable in a bed. But there were dozens more who needed beds and orders, subclasses, Servamps, and members of C3 alike, and reports to headquarters that needed to be filed; and so once again Tooru couldn’t play the part of doting family member to the person who needed it the most.

But Mahiru isn’t alone when Tooru rolls back into the room with a cup of coffee in his hand. Kuro jolts where he sits in a chair by Mahiru’s bedside, maintaining his human form despite the still visible wounds slashing across his pale skin.

He doesn’t quite glare at Tooru, but he does stare at him with his body hunched over the bed and one of his hands twitches towards Mahiru’s still and unbroken one. His other hand curls around the metal armrest and if there was only one chair in the room, Tooru isn’t sure that Kuro would give it up to Tooru, blood relation or not.

The sight only makes Tooru smile, small enough so as not to anger the tense Servamp, as he takes the empty chair across the bed from Kuro. When Mahiru wakes he may have questions about Tooru’s involvement and the secrets he kept, but Mahiru will still look for an explanation that lets him continue to adore Tooru.

It helps Tooru focus a little better on his work knowing his nephew now has someone who will do the demanding and glaring at the people Mahiru can’t.

“Has he woken yet?” Tooru asks, taking a sip of his coffee before he speaks.

During the frantic evacuation, Kuro and Tooru worked well together, quick to respond to each other’s shouts in order to get everyone to safety.

Now Kuro blinks at him slowly three times before answering.

“No,” he says, “The doctors said maybe tonight, maybe tomorrow night. Connecting with Touma like that took more energy than he had, and that was _after_ he broke an arm and a building collapsed on him.”

“You know Mahiru,” Tooru chuckles, “Has to do everything himself.”

“Exhausting do-gooder,” Kuro agrees, and they both glance at Mahiru’s slack face.

The heart monitor beeps steadily in the background and Tooru doesn’t think he’s ever seen Mahiru draped in so much white.

“I have to go to the office,” Tooru tells Kuro, like he is any old salaryman who needs to pop by an office for some ordinary paperwork. “Nearby for now, so I can come back as soon as he wakes up. I’ll have to go a bit further out later.”

He looks up to find Kuro staring again. Kuro’s shoulders slump a fraction and he nods but he gives no further indication of what he thinks of Tooru now. He shifts as Tooru stands up, but only to scoot his chair a little closer to the bed as if content to be his Eve’s sentry for eternity.

Judging by the way Mahiru buried his fingers in the fur of Kuro’s hood before passing out, his nephew would do the same if their positions were reversed.

“I don’t want to hear your history until Mahiru is awake,” Kuro says when Tooru gets halfway to the door.

He stops and turns slightly back toward the vampire whose silver hair falls into his eyes as he tilts his head. “But did you know what I was when you found me in the apartment?”

Tooru turns to face him fully again but Kuro continues before he can respond. “You would have had to; I’m sure C3 has a recent picture for all us Servamps on file, and you were the ones running that SNS for vampires.”

Kuro watches him in a way that proves the latest note in his report is correct; this Sloth is different from the one who’s spent the last decades wandering from place to place in search of a dark corner where he can sleep and eat while ignoring the greater world around him. To claim, however, that this difference has no intrinsic source would be to ignore the older notes on the Servamps.

For C3’s disdain for the Servamps drip from every page of those earlier notes, but they do not ignore reality. They acknowledge the oldest Servamp’s power, and the intelligence that surprised them when he offered sharp comments at the end of a meeting he seemed to have been sleeping through.

That intelligence has always been as much a part of him as his laziness. The former has simply receded beneath the latter in a desperate attempt to shield him from the aftershocks of the rift C3 tore in the patchwork family the vampires built from the ashes of their old lives.

“I knew who you were,” Tooru admits. “And we knew about you and your siblings meeting at that family restaurant with my nephew in tow. Not to mention we know what all your animal forms are.”

“So you just ignored it.”

“Have you forgotten that C3 asked and then forcibly requested you meet with them?”

“ _You_ ,” Kuro says, and the vampire can’t possibly know about Touma and all the other familial history Tooru has yet to share with Mahiru, but he glares at Tooru like he does, “despite being a magician yourself, ignored the fact that your nephew was housing a vampire and had gotten hurt.”

“I knew the injuries were from Tsubaki,” Tooru says, and coffee sloshes when his hand tightens around the flimsy Styrofoam at the reminder of coming home to a bandaged nephew. “And you’d already made a contract with Mahiru.”

“So kill me.” Kuro doesn’t shout and he doesn’t whisper. The words are a simple statement of fact rolling off his steady tongue. “Break the contract. You can’t tell me C3 couldn’t or hasn’t found a way.”

“This may come as a surprise, but just like my nephew, I don’t believe you vampires should die just because you’re vampires.”

The room’s overhead fan clicks on in the ensuing pause, and Tooru’s whole body aches under Kuro’s observation just like another building has fallen on him.

“Does it bother you?” Tooru asks when Kuro doesn’t continue his interrogation. He keeps his tone quiet for this is not meant to be retaliation but simple curiosity. “That after you hated C3 for so long and went without an Eve for so long, you made a contract with someone from an entire family of magicians working for C3?”

“Do you think Mahiru would nag less if he wasn’t a magician?” Kuro asks.

“Highly doubt it.”

“Then it doesn’t matter.” Kuro speaks slowly as if expecting Tooru to add this quote to C3’s profile on him. “I would choose Mahiru a hundred lifetimes over, no matter who his family was.”

Tooru doesn’t fight his smile this time as he gives Kuro a nod and finally leaves the room.

He will not add any part of this conversation to Kuro’s official profile, but he will carefully hoard Kuro’s declaration for when he needs a salve for his tired heart.

 

***

 

“Should we find the little miss?”

The sun set long ago, and Wrath fallen asleep to heal her injuries. No one has entered the hospital room since she first fell asleep, and so Ray and Gil have sat holding one hand each in undisturbed peace.

Ray asks the question, voice rusty from his own injuries and sitting for so long in silence. C3 gave him the necessary surgery and wrapped his stump in fresh bandages, but while they told him he should rest in his own hospital room, he immediately hobbled with Gil over to Wrath’s. It looks the same as the one he would have been stuck in; pale blue curtains drawn across a single window, sterile white walls, single cot bed, and an assortment of medical machines pushed against the wall by Wrath’s head.

“Gil?” Ray asks when he doesn’t respond. He’s been quieter than usual since the first hour they took up residence at Wrath’s side, and he slumps with his hand propping up his head on the bed.

“What was that?” Gil finally replies and looks up. Every time he sees Ray’s missing limb, his whole body crumples like a Japanese fan folding in on itself, but Ray keeps talking like nothing has changed.

“The little miss,” Ray repeats, “She was hurt too. Should we find her?”

The girl was passed out when they finally reunited with Wrath again, both their Servamp and a bleeding human hovering over her. She was wheeled away for surgery just like Ray, with a promise that the bullet wound wasn’t fatal.

“Probably,” Gil says after a second, “Sister Wrath likes and likes her, doesn’t she, Ray?”

“That’s right, Gil. She likes her.”

Neither of them release Wrath’s hand despite their agreement, and Gil looks back to Wrath’s face with a furrow in his brown.

“It’s really okay if we leave her for a bit, right, Ray?” Gil asks, because C3 may be helping them now, but the doctors and higher-ups are not the same people who proved through blood and battle that they could be trusted. The strangers they run into here are just as likely to be like Izuna as they are Touma. “She’ll get better and better.”

“That’s right, Gil. Better and better.”

Another minute ticks by and Gil still clings to her, so Ray releases the hand he holds and claps Gil lightly on the shoulder.

“I’ll go look for the little miss,” Ray says, “You stay here and take care of Sister Wrath.”

Gil grabs him before he can pull away, eyes just as wide as when Ray lost his arm.

“They still don’t like us,” Gil says, and Ray smiles.

“I know. But we don’t like all of them.”

Gil’s painful grip on Ray’s arm loosens at that, but he doesn’t look away yet.

“You, Sister Wrath, and the little miss.”

“You, Sister Wrath, and the little miss,” Ray confirms. Only then does Gil let go, leaning against the metal back of his chair and watching Ray leave the room.

 Despite the late hour, Ray passes a handful of doctors and nurses in the halls, as well as a few patients and even visitors. C3 seems to have an entire ward spread across a couple floors reserved for their workers, and now the subclasses, with much more independent mobility given to everyone who enters.

There are fewer signs in this section too, most of the ones Ray sees being simple plaques listing the room numbers on that floor. There is one sign pointing to where the main building is and arrows pointing to the stairwells, but otherwise the corridors of white seem intentionally designed to provide as few details as possible.

Ray asks the fifth nurse he sees where Izuna’s room is when he can’t find it after wandering through two floors. The nurse gives him a room number back on the same floor as Wrath, and Ray checks, but once again finds the room empty. The bedsheets are pulled up to the fluffed pillow as if there was never a patient in the first place, and Ray stands in the doorway contemplating the little he knows about Izuna.

“Excuse me,” he asks a doctor scurrying by, clipboard so close to his face he could be kissing it, “Do you know where the labs are here?”

The doctor almost runs right past Ray, but he stops to do a double-take at Ray’s empty sleeve dangling flat against his side.

“Level B1 and B2,” the doctor says with a frown. The doctor opens his mouth but then closes it a heartbeat later and hurries off with a shake of his head.

Ray takes the stairs, using every step to get used to his new equilibrium without worried eyes watching for any slips that need instant help.

No lights are on in the B1 halls, but when Ray reaches the bottom of the stairwell in B2, he hears voices bouncing off the concrete walls. He follows them to the third doorway where yellow spills out onto the dark floor.

Ray moves into the room as soon as he sees Izuna standing with one hand on her hip and short hair clipped back from her face. Before he can open his mouth to speak, Izuna’s friend, Shuuhei, steps around the cluttered desk and into Izuna’s personal space.

“You’re being completely unreasonable,” he says, voice brittle and cracking like he’s been repeating that phrase for the past hour.

“I told you, the doctors said I’m fine.”

“They said you were fine to walk around, not throw yourself into a new project.”

“I’m not going to go all out right away. I won’t even use this arm for the first night.”

“You have never _not_ gone all out for your projects, and that was when you didn’t feel guilty.”

Ray starts to back out of the room with his vampire-quiet footsteps, but his foot catches on a hunk of metal. He tries to flail his arms, but his wildly circling left arm only throws him further off balance, and he crashes flat on his butt. The squabbling humans jump as the mess that caused his fall goes skittering across the floor, and Ray raises his left arm with a wobbly smile.

“Hello there, little miss, I was just looking for you.”

“Ray!”

She hurries over, but Ray waves away her offer of help. Even with the looks he receives and the discovery that vampires can in fact feel phantom pain like humans, he keeps forgetting he’s lost something. Times like this are a sharp reminder, but worse is the way that struggling for too long with things like standing up makes Gil simultaneously scowl and scrunch his eyes like he’s about to cry.

Ray will do anything to erase that expression and stop Wrath from ever making a similar one when she finally wakes.

Which means learning to quickly use one arm and his core to rock into a squat before straightening to a stand with minimal wobbling.

“I’m glad you’re here,” Izuna tells him, though her face also screws up as she watches Ray stand. “I was going to need to take measurements eventually, and it might actually be better to take them at the start.”

“It would actually be better to rest at the start,” Shuuhei says, joining them as he glares at Izuna. She returns his look with her own scowl, hands once again landing on her jutting hips.

“I can go if there’s a problem, little miss,” Ray tells her.

“No, it’s actually better you stay so Loki can see exactly why I need to do this.”

“I know why you need to do this,” Shuuhei snaps, “Just like you know why I need you to take care of yourself.”

He gestures to her right shoulder where a faint smell of blood wafts. Not from an open wound, but one that is still fresh, stitched up and healing.

The wound makes Ray look back to the desk and workbench once again, but this time he studies the pile of wires, rods, carbon fiber, and foam until he can see the anatomical shape they’ve been arranged in. A laptop perches precariously on one corner, and Ray can’t read all the small footnotes, but he can easily see the prototype image.

“I told you, I won’t use this arm for now–”

“You can’t make a prosthetic with one arm.”

“Technically,” Ray says slowly, and wiggles his fingers at them, “We have two arms.”

Shuuhei finally looks at him, but he can’t look at either Ray’s arm or the missing space for more than a few seconds.

“Yes,” Izuna breathes, stepping closer with a light in her eyes that Ray never got to see when they were all trapped by bleeding bodies in a crumbling hallway. “I think I know how to do everything, but I need someone to hold stuff in place, especially for the welding parts.”

“Sounds easy enough, little miss,” Ray replies with a smile, but from one second to the next, Izuna deflates into the horrified girl she was in the immediate aftermath of Touma’s attack.

“But is that really okay?” she asks, holding herself like she has been shot all over, “Asking you to help me make a prosthetic for you because my weapon destroyed your arm? Shouldn’t I make it on my own for it to be a proper apology and compensation?”

“Little miss, do you forgive your friend for shooting you?”

“She shouldn’t,” Shuuhei mutters, but Izuna straightens once more just to jut her chin out and glare at him.

“Of course,” she declares.

“And do you remember how Sister Wrath chooses her subclass?”

“From soldiers,” Izuna replies, defiant posture loosening a fraction, but her voice still strong.

“It’s true that you were wilfully ignorant when you made weapons for C3. It’s true that your creation took my arm. But it’s also true that you had good intentions that were twisted by others, just like battle corrupts any form of nobleness a solider enters with.”

There were soldiers on Ray’s side who lost their limbs, and soldiers on the other side who Ray helped steal the limbs of during battle. Some men died from those bandaged injuries hours after the final wound was inflicted; others were sent home to hobble on crutches without a vampire’s sturdiness to help counterbalance their loss.

Ray whispered the same pitying words for them that the rest of his platoon did, averted his eyes from the stained bandages just like everyone else. At the time, it only ever mattered that it wasn’t Ray who lost chunks of his flesh, wasn’t Ray covered in blood, wasn’t Ray screaming about his ears ringing or the dark in his eyes, wasn’t Ray begging for his momma to come make the pain stop.

He wrote letters sometimes where he poured out detail after detail that he couldn’t weep about with his comrades when they were all already stumbling on the crumbling cliffside of sanity. He wrote about the flies now hovering above his skin all day and night like they knew his time was coming. The water that was the veins and arteries of his city as it carried boats and people alike twisting into a mirror of death with its rust colour and floating bodies. The men who laughed with him over a game of cards but snarled like wild animals as they beat the face of enemies into cubist art on the battle field.

He wrote down the number of times he heard grown men sobbing near him at night as he clutched the handkerchief with the tiny rabbit face his youngest sister embroidered him for his birthday before he marched off to fight. The current size of the collection of dented and muddy crosses his lieutenant carried around thinking the family members of the dead would want the reminder of the faith that couldn’t save their loved ones.

Ray had lost his faith kilometers back in the shadow of a burnt bakery when he pushed a gasping sixteen-year old’s slick intestines back into his body and held them in place with his hands until the medic could get there. The child’s rattling breath stopped twenty seconds after help arrived and the medic simply told Ray to leave the body there.

“At least the crows will eat well tonight,” the medic said, ordering Ray to go wash his hands in an already bloody well.

Ray would never send those letters, sometimes scratching out those lines until the paper ripped. Other times he rolled them up as tightly as he could and squashed them in the bottom of the pack he carried with him day and night.

He could not send them. Not to the family who heard only about the glory, and who wanted him to return but without all the pesky trauma that they, God willing, would never understand.   

“People have done much worse things than you simply to survive,” Ray tells Izuna, “Myself included. You are easy to forgive compared to that.”

He steps closer but doesn’t touch her even as he watches her piece herself back together just like all the machines she makes. “And I would like to help.”

“I’ll help too.” A sigh hovers beneath Shuuhei’s words, but for the first time he meets Ray’s gaze and doesn’t look away. “Since clearly neither of you will listen to reason.”

“But you have to help with the clean-up,” Izuna protests, and drops her arms to her sides.

“I’ll come on my breaks to make sure _you’re_ taking breaks. And eating.”

“That only happened three times.”

“And you nearly passed out all three times.”

“We will be careful and careful,” Ray cuts in, and he expects a protest from this infamously hostile C3 member. Perhaps a gritted warning, or a pointed and protective hug of Izuna.

The eyes that look at him are a little a wide, and hands do reach out to squeeze Izuna’s uninjured shoulder. But he nods at Ray and leaves the room with only one more resigned reminder for them both to be careful and a promise to return in a few hours.

“I just have one condition, little miss,” Ray says as Izuna waves him over to her workbench. He watches the ground on the way this time for any more piles of spare parts and takes a ginger seat on the half-covered bench.

She takes a seat beside him, all hesitation vanishing when her hand closes around a thin rod of silver metal even as she keeps her head tilted toward him to hear his request. “Let’s make it a surprise for Gil.”

She blinks once before grinning at him, big and warm in a way that, despite everything, makes Ray glad she’s still here to give him one.

 

***

 

Mahiru wakes to the darkness of a collapsed basement, the darkness of a tower’s base, the darkness of an empty room.

He jolts up and fire flares in his arm. Debris keeps him from moving too far, and he shoves blindly at the material trapping his legs with his free arm. Skin tears and Mahiru gasps as he stops and curls around his wrist.

His pulse roars with the strength of a dragon hiding in the shadows blanketing the room and he doesn’t know how long it takes for the noise to subside enough for him to think. First comes thoughts of pain, and when he uncurls to check his injuries, his eyes have adjusted enough that he can see the wire dangling from his wrist.

His hand spasms at the sight, which only makes the wire shift more and Mahiru hisses at the ripping of his skin. He looks to his other arm and sees it’s no longer a dirty jacket that binds the limb to his body.

But the flames still lick beneath his skin, burning hot enough to make Mahiru squeeze his eyes shut against threatening tears. Even when he first woke after his connection with Tsurugi’s spirit, the bone didn’t ache like this, though maybe that was because he was so focused on finding Kuro.

Mahiru’s eyes fly open and his pulse begins hammering again when he can’t find Kuro anywhere in the barren room. The bed implies rescue and the fight was ending when Mahiru lost consciousness, but they were still trapped in a building collapsing all around them with at least half a dozen injured parties to save. 

“Kuro?” His throat cracks with every croaked syllable. He grabs at his throat with a wince, but that only pulls on his injured arm more and he bends over with a swallowed groan.

The position only lasts for a few seconds though as Kuro’s absence pushes Mahiru into desperate action. He kicks the blankets off his legs and swings them over the left side of his bed despite how hard they shake.

His knees buckle as soon as he tries to stand, and he tries throwing out his uninjured arm to stop his fall. Instead the wire rips free from his wrist, his cast bangs against the side of the bed, and his vision goes completely black.

His already broken bones screeching as they’re grinded beneath his body brings Mahiru back to consciousness within seconds, and he rolls over as best he can. He wobbles and wheezes like a toddler who hasn’t fully learned how to move from front to back without help yet. Screams build in his throat at the jostling of his cast, but he swallows enough notes down that when he finally lies on his back, he only sounds like he’s choking on air.

Sweat now pours down his back despite the cool air, but Mahiru still grits his teeth and heaves himself up until he’s sitting. The darkness gets deeper in the corners of his eyes, but Mahiru reaches for the bed with his good hand because he’s still alone.

He uses the bed to pull himself into a kneel before he once more starts to stand.

He only gets halfway before his legs collapse again. This time he already has a grip on a support, so he slams to his knees but no further.

The relief only lasts for a few seconds though as his arm shakes like his legs and he begins to slide to the side.

“Mahiru?”

Kuro’s voice calls to him and Mahiru almost topples right over in his haste to twist toward Kuro.

“I left you alone for _five minutes_ ,” Kuro says while Mahiru clutches at the soft mattress and flimsy blankets to stop from falling. “What happened?”

“I’m okay,” Mahiru gasps, instead of letting the _oh thank god_ slip out. A hand grabs his uninjured shoulder and he leans to that side. “I’m okay, my arm just really, really _hurts_.”

As soon as he says the descriptor word out loud, liquid rolls down his cheeks and splashes his cast. He hunches in on himself as a sob chokes his next breath, and only Kuro keeps him from once more falling onto his face.

Instead of moving him, Kuro wraps an arm around Mahiru’s back and lets him rest fully against Kuro’s chest. They mirror the position they took right after Mahiru and Touma’s connection ended, but this time every part of Mahiru’s bruised body exists in hyper-focus.

Mahiru shoves his hand over his mouth to rein in his break-down and shakes his head when Kuro says his name again.

“Do you need your uncle?” Kuro asks, and Mahiru shakes his head again. “A doctor? They can give you more pain meds.”

“Don’t go,” Mahiru whispers, a childish sentiment he has spent his entire life swallowing down until he thought it was safely digested.

That, however, was before someone twisted his arm with their bare hands and a building fell on him. Before he threw his broken body into the second fight of an hour and his mind into a hostile world. Before Touma’s words carved divots into his brain and left blood swelling inside his skull with nowhere to drain.

Exposing the depths of Touma’s heart and the hope that still lingered there meant exposing his own, just as Touma said. Exposing them means facing them, and Mahiru knows he can do that. Has already half done so in the spiritual landscape when Touma taunted him over his father’s abandonment.

But his physical body still needs to catch up, just as Mahiru still needs to face those truths in the physical world and not just the spiritual one.

“Okay,” Kuro says, and holds him tighter.

In that dark hospital room, Mahiru’s body is an earthquake, a flood, and a fire all at once. He only has one good hand to put out all the disasters, and so time slips steadily by on that hard ground while he tries to wipe away his tears, keep the burning in his arm contained, and ride out the tremors until they are only small aftershocks.

Kuro holds him throughout it all, no matter how much water and snot Mahiru gets on his sweater when Mahiru buries his face in Kuro’s chest to limit the oxygen feeding the fires.

Only once Mahiru turns his face slightly and can gulp in air without choking does Kuro speak again.

“Come on,” he says, “You’ll feel better on a soft bed.”

Mahiru grips the collar of Kuro’s sweater to pull himself up, but Kuro sweeps one arm under Mahiru’s weak legs before Mahiru can try.

“Sorry,” Mahiru says as Kuro straightens with Mahiru in his arms.

“This is why you were supposed to keep the IV in,” Kuro huffs, but lowers Mahiru onto the bed without once jostling Mahiru’s bad arm. “You lost a lot of blood, not to mention forcing a connection with someone’s mind.”

Kuro grabs the blankets that have fallen, though Mahiru’s hand still clutches at his sweater. “You should still be sleeping.”

“I wanted to make sure everyone was okay,” Mahiru says, even though tears still leak down his cheeks and his words are more gasps than recognizable language. Kuro glances at him, eyes glowing silver like a cat’s in the dark.

“They’re okay,” Kuro says, and purses his lips at the IV Mahiru accidentally tore out. He places it on top of a monitor and mutters something about calling a doctor.

“Is that where you were?”

“Yeah.”

Before Mahiru can say anything, Kuro climbs into the space he left on Mahiru’s left side. He wraps an arm around Mahiru’s waist, and Mahiru lets himself embrace the physical comfort he is being offered so freely. He lets go of Kuro’s sweater but slumps against him like he would a pillow and melts into Kuro’s body heat.  

For a long moment, Mahiru keeps his eyes closed and matches his laboured breaths to Kuro’s slow ones.

“What else is wrong?” Kuro asks after a moment. Most of the shaking has stopped and Mahiru sits upright thanks to Kuro, but the disasters have left behind emptied out nerves and smoking bones that make Mahiru struggle to open his eyes.

“What?”

“You’ve been tossed around before,” Kuro says, “That wasn’t just from your arm.”

“You said there was blood loss, too.”

“And probably a concussion,” Kuro says, which drags Mahiru’s gaze up to Kuro’s face. He stares back and Mahiru can’t see the bags under his eyes in the night, but Kuro sounds like they’ve grown darker in the past few hours.

“That sounds like a pretty painful combo on its own.”

“You’ve never freaked out about me being nearby before,” Kuro says, and Mahiru swallows his instinctive denial. “You hate the distance limit.”

“I said I think it makes everyone unnecessarily codependent,” Mahiru replies as his heartbeat begins to pound again.

Kuro huffs, but doesn’t argue like he has before given he loves being carried around on Mahiru’s head.

“You said some stuff during the fight,” he says a moment later, and it almost sounds like a question.

“I meant it,” Mahiru assures him, because he does want Kuro, with his lowkey self-loathing, to know just how many empty spaces he has filled in Mahiru’s life.

Kuro dips his head to press his cheek to Mahiru’s hair for just a second in thanks.

“So, you shouted that like an angry hero,” Kuro says, “We physically stopped Touma. And then?”

“And then we won?”

“Mahiru,” Kuro says, and even though the little creature told Mahiru he is different from Kuro, Kuro looks at him like he understands exactly what Mahiru suffered in his spiritual connections, “What did Touma say to you in his mind?”

It’s the bluntness, coming from the vampire that still shies away from emotional conversations, that makes Mahiru’s intended misdirection falter and die like paper going up in smoke. He told Touma he couldn’t talk about his father the first time Kuro asked, and he admitted he needed to face that now, but Kuro’s question still makes Mahiru grab a fistful of Kuro’s sweater with his free hand.

Kuro’s fingers tighten around Mahiru’s hip in response.

“He mentioned my dad.”

The word no more summons him than it did when Mahiru was a child desperately chanting it like a hopeful spell.

“Oh.” The heart rate monitor beeps behind them and Mahiru takes a deep breath. “You’ve never talked about him before.”

“He left when I was a baby.” After keeping that information locked away for so long, the words don’t sound real when Mahiru says them. “He didn’t even show up to my mom’s funeral.”

It’s just sound yet speaking feels like dragging razor blades over his tongue. The blood pours down his throat and chokes him before he can try adding anything more.

His eyes burn once more but he blinks until they stop.

“He’s an idiot,” Kuro replies, and Mahiru’s startled laughter makes the blood bubble and clear a millilitre. “Like most fathers.”

“Yours was too?” Mahiru asks, tilting his head back to watch Kuro’s lips twist for a heart beat.

“Complicated, but yeah.”

“Apparently my entire family situation is complicated,” Mahiru says, thinking of his uncle reaching out a hand to Touma in the past, of his mom standing on the edge of a magician’s shadow, of the dark rods shooting up from the ground and sparking from his uncle’s hands in the middle of a cracked hall.  

He supposes that even before that, an outsider might consider Mahiru’s family situation to be complicated. But Mahiru never did, not consciously, not until Tsurugi’s spirit peeled back the happy wallpaper Mahiru pasted over his memories of summer vacations to reveal the patches of loneliness staining the entire backdrop like spilled wine.

Kuro hums in response, but chews on his next words. Mahiru stays quiet as well, relearning to breathe in a world that can see old cuts scarring his heart newly ripped open. But only moonlight illuminates the scars in that moment, and only Kuro’s hands are close enough to touch. While those hands can change to claws in seconds, they much prefer to wrap around harmless video games when they aren’t keeping Mahiru out of harm’s way.

And Kuro hates blood, real and metaphorical, so Mahiru knows he will do his best not to jostle Mahiru and tear the scars more.

Mahiru breathes easier at that thought, and his eyes finally grow heavy with the mattress beneath him, the soft clothing in his hand, and the warmth wrapping around him. Yet still he clings to Kuro and consciousness, nudging Kuro’s shoulder with his head to get a verbal response.

Kuro rests his chin on Mahiru’s head in retaliation and his chest rumbles at Mahiru’s back when he speaks.

“At this point I’m shocked you didn’t end up as one of Lily’s subclasses,” Kuro tells him.

“I’m glad I didn’t.”

“Not actually dying for immortality?”

“No, not really.” He shifts and dislodges Kuro just so he can tilt his head back for Kuro to see the slight smile on his face. “But I was going to say it’s because then I would have never become your Eve.”

“Less broken arms that way,” Kuro says, fingers tapping Mahiru’s hipbone. “Less nagging too.”

“Less company, too,” Mahiru shoots back. “And more meals alone.”

Kuro goes quiet at that. Mahiru keeps gazing at him, but glances down when Kuro’s free hand covers Mahiru’s where it still twists in Kuro’s sweater. Without a word, Kuro carefully pries Mahiru’s hand free but only to interlock their fingers.

“Don’t worry,” Kuro says, “Me and my cup ramen will be around for as long as you want to yell at us.”

“I’m too tired to roll my eyes at you right now,” Mahiru tells him, and lets his head fall back fully against Kuro again, “But thank you.”

Kuro mutters something too low for Mahiru and his fading body to hear. The dark in his vision grows thick again, but Mahiru doesn’t try to fight it now that he has someone to hold him until the sun wakes for another day.

 

***

 

“Did you enjoy your time with Licht and Hyde?” Mahiru asks as they walk away from the hospital. The high rises of Tokyo already block the sun, dusk spilling like a wedding train across the sky.

“Why are you always so cruel to your adorable pet?” Kuro complains where he rests on Mahiru’s head. His small paws press against Mahiru’s forehead and his soft fur slides along Mahiru’s hair.

“You like being coddled,” Mahiru says, managing to keep a straight face only because Kuro isn’t looking. “You always complain I don’t pet you enough.”

“You _know_ I think Licht is too touchy.”

“I have never heard you say that ever.”

“Mahiru,” Kuro complains, drawing his name out into a full sentence, and Mahiru finally grins. Kuro’s tail swishes behind them as Mahiru takes the long way to the station, still relishing his ability to walk outside in the cold air with his Servamp with him. “I can’t believe you would do this to me after all the work I do for you.”

“You are the laziest creature I know.”

“I do all that cleaning–”

“You’re the one always spreading crumbs everywhere.”

“And cooking–”

“You literally told me three days ago you would just feed me cup ramen if I couldn’t cook.”

“And laundry–”

“Your napping is a menace to all loads of laundry.”

“And studying–”

“You helped me _one time_ with my history homework.”

“And all the secret treats I share–”

“Okay, I’ll give you that one.”

“And top ten movies I tell you about–”

“I think you’re moving away from actual helpful things and into the zone of truth.”

“And filling your life with cuteness–”

“Okay, okay, I get it,” Mahiru says, still smiling because Kuro being ridiculous means Kuro being alive, and Mahiru being alive to hear it.

“And–”

“ _Kuro_.” He reaches up with his good hand to poke Kuro’s forehead. “I get it, I get it. I’ll buy you some of those choco puffs as an apology.”

“The strawberry cream ones?”

“Sure.”

The station sign comes into sight, crowds of salarymen streaming in and out while the train rattles across the bridge above their heads.

“Apology accepted,” Kuro decides, and yawns as if that faux argument exhausted him. But Yumi told Mahiru that Kuro has been awake every second that Mahiru has been in the hospital, so Mahiru doesn’t roll his eyes too much.  

“You are such a child,” Mahiru still tells him.

“It’s only the immature who cannot see the true maturity of simple innocence,” Kuro intones, and when Mahiru tilts his head in question he adds, “Speaking simply, _you’re_ the child.”

Kuro yawns again as if he has truly shared an important life lesson and startled laughter spills from Mahiru’s lips, brighter than the stars that cannot be seen but are always glittering in the night sky.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Me: has had the first part of an AU written for about three months  
> Also me: decides to reread the entire manga to measure my Japanese improvement and get reconnected emotionally before the conclusion of the C3 arc 
> 
> SO HOW ABOUT THAT GOOD OLE TRAUMA AND CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT EH? 
> 
> I won’t lie, when I first started the C3 arc, I didn’t care much about all the new C3 characters because I just wanted to know more about the Servamps and I was much more impatient (and frustrated) with my own Japanese ability (Touma and them be throwing around all those words like combat squad and prison break and chuuni syndrome and child abuse that were definitely in my university textbooks yup 100% didn’t need to Weblio those words) 
> 
> But now I love most everyone there (*hisses at Touma*) and I got super emotionally attached to all of them, not to mention all that beautiful development we got of Mahiru’s insecurities and what Kuro has done for him personally, plus reveals about his family. (*hisses even louder at Touma*) 
> 
> Hope you enjoyed the fic! Come say hi on Twitter @BexG_R or gracer222 on Tumblr ^^
> 
> Side note 1: listen. Listen. I don’t necessarily hate Uncle Tooru, I understand we are probably going to get some reasons in later chapters, but he still left a 10/11-year-old child alone who we know (from Yumi’s flashbacks) was canonically more likely to be targeted by supernatural creatures, and Tooru didn’t even mention anything?? We haven’t been given any evidence of security measures that might have been set up? And even ignoring the supernatural/vampire/magician shit, HE LEFT A 10/11-YEAR-OLD ALONE FOR DAYS AT A TIME?? And listen, I know for a fact that is the life of some of my students here, I know some of them have to cook their own meals and all that jazz, I had to babysit my younger siblings when I was 12 after school, so it’s somewhat realistic, BUT I’M STILL MAD ABOUT IT. And as much as it’s kind of just accepted in canon as Mahiru’s life, I’d like to think that Kuro would in fact be unhappy learning there was a vampire threat the whole time and a family member who knew but kept Mahiru completely in the dark. 
> 
> Side note 2: They don’t have squirrels in Tokyo hence the “weird rat thing” description
> 
> Side note 3: I spent a ridiculously unnecessary time debating whether to write Izuna’s nickname for Shuuhei as “Loki” or “Roki” because I mostly just read the Japanese volumes (before remembering she is a native English speaker who wouldn’t have trouble producing the ‘l’ sound) and then then I saw that the official English serialization translates it as “Teriyaki” and I just want to say from the bottom of my heart, “thanks I hate it”


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